Episode 312: Protect Your Business From Unforeseen Events with Corinne Schmitt and Christina Hitchcock

312_CHRISTINA_CORINNE

Christina Hitchcock: Hi, this is Christina Hitchcock and Corrine Schmitt from The Smart Influencer. You are listening to the Eat Blog Talk podcast. 

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Megan Porta: Hey food bloggers. Welcome to Eat Blog Talk, the podcast for food bloggers looking for the value and confidence that will move the needle forward in their businesses. This episode is sponsored by RankIQ. I’m your host, Megan Porta, and you are listening to episode number 312. Today Christina and Corrine are here to talk to us about how to protect your business when an unforeseen event occurs. Partners Corinne Schmidt and Christina Hitchcock are both six-figure influencers with multiple websites. Over the years, they’ve become organizational ninjas and workflow fanatics with a knack for providing actionable strategies to help influencers work smarter and scale faster. These women have been in the blogging space for over 10 years and they’ve learned a lot along the way and often the hard way. They share their insights on working smarter on The Smart Influencer, a podcast and a private mentoring group where they help other influencers work smarter and grow stronger. I love your bio, you guys. Thank you so much for joining me today. I’m super excited for this chat. 

Corinne Schmitt: Thanks for having us. We’re excited to be here. 

Megan Porta: Yeah. And before we get into it, we want to hear what your fun facts are. Why don’t you each share one? 

Corinne Schmitt: Okay. So mine, it’s just the thing that surprises people the most and then makes them never want to write to me. When I decided to stay home with my son, it was an unexpected decision that I’d go back to work. So I had a lot of spare time on my hands because babies sleep a lot. For some reason, I thought it’d be fun to study handwriting analysis. I am an amateur handwriting analyst. Makes people not ever want to send me Christmas cards anymore.

Megan Porta: That’s so interesting. Okay. How do you even get started with something like that? How do you even get started?

Corinne Schmitt: I mean there’s a lot of books on it. It’s funny. If you look at two different handwriting samples without knowing what you’re looking at, you can tell if someone’s got mental issues or if someone’s uptight, like they’re just a lot of things naturally that come through in our handwriting. So fun, fun fact is my mom’s handwriting, it’s identical to Ted Bundy’s. Like indiscernible. She’s not a serial killer as far as we know. I remember when I saw that sample book of a go out. It’s my mom’s handwriting. 

Megan Porta: Did you tell her? Did you share that with her?

Corinne Schmitt: No, no, no. Didn’t want to give her any ideas.

Megan Porta: She’d be mortified, right?

Christina Hitchcock: Corrine, I never knew this about you. I want you to do mine. 

Megan Porta: See? This is exactly why I love the fun facts. I was going to say, I should not hold up my notebook to the camera because you’d be like, what is wrong with that woman? I feel like my handwriting changes from day to day, is that normal? Like some days it’s like really nice and scripted and others, it’s like, I look like a mass murderer. It’s crazy. 

Corinne Schmitt: Depends on your mood and what’s going on in your life, so…

Megan Porta: wow. Okay. That was super fun. So now Christina, we want to hear yours.

Christina Hitchcock: I should’ve gone first. I can’t top that. So mine is that most people don’t know or wouldn’t guess it, when they look at me or talk to me even, but I love shooting guns. I trap shoot and I have been doing it since I was 12. I go every week. It’s just one of those things that I just, I love to do.

Corinne Schmitt: She’s really good at it too.

Megan Porta: Well, if you go weekly, you’re going to get good over time. Right? That’s cool. 

Christina Hitchcock: But it’s just a little different. I mean, I’m the girl that wears pearls and loafers and stuff like that. Then on Wednesday night, it’s a different story.

Megan Porta: The fun facts are my favorite for this reason. Now I feel like I know you guys a little bit better. So you are here to actually talk about protecting your business when an unforeseen event happens. Because as we all know, we’ve been through some pretty significant unforeseen events recently, all of us. So let’s talk about this. Why do you guys think it’s important to have a contingency plan in the first place?

Christina Hitchcock: So I’ll start off here. I actually had two experiences that happened to me that kind of got this ball rolling for me. A few years ago, my father-in-law passed away and he was meticulous about keeping notes and keeping things organized. However he had every document that ever came through their house. I mean, every check register from like the 1960s till present, tons of stuff. While he had everything, we didn’t know where all the important stuff was. More importantly, we didn’t know if we had all the important documentation. So it was a pretty stressful time. I mean, because your emotions are high to begin with. Then you’re trying to figure all that stuff out. The second thing that happened was when I was in college. I was away at college and I got a call one weekend. My dad had owned his own business and he had a building next to our home and it had burned to the ground overnight while he was gone to my brother’s basketball game. It was a total fluke, you know, somebody hit a pole, a surge came through the box, the building burned down. But everything that he had, all his important documentation and everything was in that building. So he lost everything. I said, I can never forget coming home and seeing this big, tough guy sitting at our dining room table with his head in his hands and crying because he just didn’t know where to start picking up the pieces. Who do you call, where do you go? There’s so many things to do. He just didn’t know where to start, because everything that he needed was in there and it was gone. So, you look at those two situations and it just made me think that, oh my gosh, it’s so important with our businesses to make sure that we’re protected and that we have all of our ducks in a row. God forbid something happened to us. Like you said, we know how fragile everything is with everything we’ve gone through so far.

Corinne Schmitt: My motives are much more selfish. My first one was like, I put a lot of time in here. I think it’s one of those things that tends to pull you in. So there was a point when I was working probably 60, 70 hours a week. My family was starting to complain. Then you see some success, right? You put in the time you see some success. I thought it would be terrible if all that time just evaporated because no one knew how to pick it up if something happened to me. Then more recently, like I’m in the midst of a divorce, my blog income used to be fun money. Like it was extra money. It’s, you know, we used it to put in the pool. We used it to go on vacation. Well, now it’s how I pay the bills. So it’s a lot more serious now that I have a way to keep it running if something happens to me. Because otherwise we would lose the house. So mine’s more selfishly motivated, but very real reasons for having it.

Megan Porta: Yeah. You guys touched on a few different reasons why you would need plans. There’s a pandemic. I mean, we haven’t mentioned that yet, but something huge like a pandemic or a divorce. Something we often don’t think about because nobody plans for that, right? Then the fire, you mentioned. It happened to your father and all of those documents were burned. So clearly he couldn’t have, I mean, I don’t know when this happened, but digital files are important too. So yeah, talk about that. Do you recommend keeping paper files or digital or both?

Corinne Schmitt: So Christina and I always say, when everything we talk about, you need to do what works for you, right? I’m a pen and paper person, so I like that. But with the contingency plan, it is the one place that I push people a little more to keep it digitally and not just digitally, but in a cloud. So that if your house burns down, you can access it from the neighbor’s house or from the hotel. Like all things, this is one thing I think even if your pen and paper, and I am, I get it. Even with your pen and paper, it needs to live somewhere else. Then the other reason you want it in the cloud is then you can update it and you can keep on top of it from anywhere. Because we do so much mobily, right? You do so much while you’re at a conference. Half my job is when I’m sitting in a carpool, trying to get through social shares and things. So I just think it’s much easier to stay on top of it so it’s actually current. Then it’s also more useful if you actually need to access it and you can share access then with someone else because the person you pick and we’ll talk about that a little later, may not be in the same house with you. So they may not be able to take a paper file from. 

Christina Hitchcock: Just logistically, when you think of a paper file, I mean, you would have to, let’s say it was in a notebook. You’d have to get that notebook out, take out the old information, put in the new information. Or let’s say there was some sort of natural emergency and you had to evacuate your house really quickly. You would have to remember to grab that before you go. Whereas if it’s in the cloud it’s sitting out there, it’s protected, it’s safe, you know, and you can access it like Corrine said from anywhere that you are. 

Megan Porta: So what things are we talking about? What things are you recommending that we have digital files for in the cloud?

Christina Hitchcock: There’s so much information. When we got thinking about this we started writing it down. I mean like, oh yes, you need to have this and that. So let’s just start with the basics. I mean, your business details, all that important stuff. Your EIN, your sales tax number. If you have an LLC or an S Corp or C corporate or partnership, all those documents. You should upload those into a digital file where you can access them so they’re not just sitting in a paper filing cabinet. Contacts I think are the next important thing. Your business contacts, your accountant, your attorney, any business partners. Contacts for your ad agency that you work with, if you do work with one. What else, Corrinne? 

Corinne Schmitt: So your tribe, if you’ve got a blog of tribes, so people they know to contact. This is why I like it digitally too, because over the course, when I built mine, when I was adding all this information over the course of the month, anytime I exchanged an email with someone and be like, oh, if someone came in and replaced me what, would they need to know to get in charge of or in contact with this person. I’m going to back up a step before we finish the list. One thing too, when we’re talking about what we do as bloggers and we’re trying to think of a contingency plan and what it’s going to be, it’s to remember that the goal is not to teach someone else to come in and be you and replace you. So when you start to think about that, like this contingency file, all of a sudden it looks ridiculous, right? Because we accumulate knowledge over years. You’re not trying to give someone that much information. What you’re trying to give them is the essential information that they’re going to need in order to keep your business running or to make an informed decision to sell it. There are different things they might do with it. So they just need that information. It’s still a lot, which is really two items into probably an eight item list. It’s still a lot, but it’s a lot less daunting than trying to think that you’re going to convey in any type of document or file everything that you do. It’s not the goal. 

Megan Porta: Right. That would be impossible.

Christina Hitchcock: It would be impossible.

Megan Porta: There’s no way. So what else do you have on the list Corrine for things to include? 

Corinne Schmitt: So login information. I mean, everything we do is online essentially. So all your login information. Much like the contacts, I recommend doing this over a time so that everything that you will log into to run your business, you’ve got that information. The most essential being the money. For me, it’s the money. I want them to know where to find the money. My family still doesn’t even understand where the money comes from. So they certainly wouldn’t know where to go to find it. Things like how to get into your site, how to access your host. If you’ve got tech support, you know how you log in to submit a ticket. All those things. Then if you’ve got a store, you know, certainly have access, whether you’re using Shopify or Thrive Cart or whatever you use. So all the logins. There’s probably like a much longer list than that, but again, we’re not training to train them to do what we do. They don’t necessarily need to get into your sponsored posts network, right? If you haven’t applied for a sponsored post in awhile they don’t necessarily need that information, but they will need to know how to go find the money. 

Christina Hitchcock: Two logins I wouldn’t forget about: number one is the login to your computer. Because, I mean, that’s the most basic, right. If somebody can’t get into my computer, they’re never going to be able to access anything. So that login. And then also if you use a password vault, like LastPass or something like that, including that login information as well would be a huge help.

Megan Porta: So who do we hand this off to? You mentioned earlier that maybe it shouldn’t necessarily be a spouse. So who do we select to get our information? 

Christina Hitchcock: Well, I think that comes down to you personally. I mean, who do you think in your network, your, you know, whether it’s family, friends, coworkers, whatever, who do you think would be the most responsible person to make these decisions about your business. Who would be able to handle you know, going through everything and making the decision, whether they should keep the business, sell the business? Shut the business down? I think you really need to think about that. I mean, most of us lean towards our spouse or partner, but that may not be the best fit for you. 

Corinne Schmitt: Right. It’s who has the bandwidth too. Whoever takes it on, it’s a big undertaking, right? We’re talking about making it as simple as possible and arming them with the information that they can use to make the smartest decisions. But it’s a big undertaking because especially if they decide to try and keep it running on autopilot. We know how much goes into just that. Even if you triaged as much as possible. So for me, I personally chose my oldest daughter. She has a general interest in it. She just had a baby. She’s going to be a stay at home mom. She had the bandwidth for it. So to me that was a big consideration and I trust her. It keeps this asset, which I think I built a big asset, within my family, which was important to me. But it could just as easily be one of my close friends that I knew would be good. You might bequeath it to a good friend or arrange a stipend for them and have them run it and the family gets the rest of it. But it really, to me, boiled down to who could and would and would not see it as much of a burden. For me, that was my oldest daughter.

Christina Hitchcock: I think it’s important to clarify something here. I think it’s important to note that the person you’re asking to take on the decision-making part of the business is not necessarily who you’re leaving your business assets to. They don’t have to be the same person, right? So, if God forbid, something happens to you and you pass your business assets onto your family, that could be something completely different than who’s going to communicate to all the people that something has happened and reach out to the accountant and just kind of get that ball rolling and figure out what to do. Because let’s face it, if something happens to you, it’s going to be a highly emotional time. So you would need somebody who can handle that stress and be able to make decisions during a difficult time like that.

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Megan Porta: That’s a really good point. So it’s not necessarily the person who’s getting your assets. It’s just someone who can handle it, has the bandwidth to handle it and can kind of navigate the details and that you trust. Right. What do you think about having a team of people? So not just one person, but maybe delegating to a handful of different people, or do you think it should just be one person?

Corinne Schmitt: So we might have different opinions on this, Christina. In general, I always like a team of people, but I do think, especially in times like this, where there are a lot of important decisions to be made, you need a leader of the team if you’re going to do a team. You need one person that is tasked with the decision making. Because decisions by group, they take longer, they’re not as efficient and they may not align with what you want. I’m in favor of one person, maybe having a team of people that they use as resources, but one person’s the decision maker. 

Christina Hitchcock: Yeah, I think and this is an important thing to talk about with an attorney too. Make sure that, especially if you do have a team, that things are in writing. Because we’ve all heard the horror stories, when somebody passes away, it destroys a family, right? There’s all this infighting and stuff like that. So I think it’s super important to make sure your wishes are written down so that everybody knows exactly what they are and they don’t have to try to guess what you would have done. Right. It just makes it easier for everybody involved. 

Corinne Schmitt: I will say that if whoever you hand it off to, if you’ve picked the one person that you have, and I talk about team in a separate way, that you have a team of people, and this is probably your tribe, right? Your blog tribe. The people that you interact with on a regular business basis, they know what you do for a living. They understand the space. They’re close friends of yours so they care what happens with your business if something happens to you. So Christina is on that team for me. So if something happened to me, whoever I hand it off to, my daughter in this case would know to contact Christina. She’s in my contingency plan. My best friend, Susan, who I talk to every day, who also has a blog, she’s on that plan because she knows exactly how I operate and what I’d want. She knows more importantly, the lingo. Just the language of what we do. I think at this point, everyone in my family should know what SEO means, but they still don’t know all the tools I use to do it.

Christina Hitchcock: They nod their head yes, but they really don’t know. 

Corinne Schmitt: They really don’t know. So having a team of people that speaks your language, that can translate because again, whoever you’re handing this off to is likely not someone in our circle. And we’re not trying to train them, but they need to be able to bridge that gap. There needs to be some sort of liaison. So whether it’s your bestie in the blogging world, or you’ve got a whole team of people like a tribe that you can turn them into. I think that’s helpful. Let those people know before you make them. 

Megan Porta: Right. I was going to say, yeah, don’t just like to surprise them. If something happens. 

Christina Hitchcock: Oh, surprise. You’re in charge. 

Megan Porta: Communicating that beforehand is probably a great idea. So how do you guys recommend that you put all of this information together? You’ve mentioned before, creating a digital folder. I mean, can you elaborate on that? How exactly do you get all of this information in one place?

Christina Hitchcock: So I think that’s a great question. That can be part of the overwhelming part of taking on this task. Right? It’s like, I know what I have to track. How do I make this easy? Like Corrine said, simplicity is the key here. So making sure everything is easy to access and in one spot. So there’s a number of ways you can do this. We recommend going with what’s comfortable for you. Google drive is a great way, right? You could just create a folder. You can then store documents and spreadsheets, or whatever you have, you can store it there. You can even upload a video there if you need to. You can use any of the productivity tools that are out there, right? There’s Trello and Asana, Click Up. Corrine and I love Airtable. That’s what we both use for our contingency plan. We have everything stored in the Airtable because it is in the cloud. It’s easy to access. You can get it from anywhere. 

Megan Porta: Do you think that people who are looking to steal content and passwords are looking for a file or a folder called contingency plan for the, you know what I mean? So I’m just trying to think of some secret word you could use, because that would be the perfect place to go to steal all the passwords, your computer log in information and all of that.

Christina Hitchcock: That’s a great question. I think that what you suggested is great. You can totally name it, something obscure, right? You could call it knitting instructions or something like that, but nobody would ever go looking for it. How to crochet 101. Nobody would ever want to look at that. Right. That’s being nefarious. But I think that’s a great thing is renaming the file to something that’s secure. But I think what’s also important is choosing a tool that has security built in, that is a secure way of storing it. Making sure that the passwords and the login you have to access that tool is strong. 

Megan Porta: Yeah, that’s a good point. Okay. So we have it all in one place. We’ve communicated to the person or team what’s happening, that they are in charge of delegating the information. So how often do you guys recommend going in and updating all the content that you’re putting into this folder?

Corinne Schmitt: So, again, this for me is why I love having it in the Airtable because I’m in Airtable everyday. We both, Christina and I, run our businesses off of it.

Megan Porta: I love Airtable. 

Corinne Schmitt: Yeah, it just checks all my boxes. You know, the color coordinating, the ability to sort out information. I don’t need to go out and make a decision. I can access it from any device. So we ran them out of Airtable. So to me, since I’m in Airtable anyway, basically, I just have that, like, it’s open. So if I make a change somewhere, I change it in the contingency plan. Now if that’s not how you operate, because I know a lot of people don’t, I’m forgetful, I’m forgetful and I’m terrible at consistency. So that’s how I have to do it. I would put it on the calendar and I would do it at least annually, at least annually. Probably the best practice would be quarterly. 

Christina Hitchcock: Yeah. I would push you to go quarterly on that. Whether you do what Corinne does, and I do that as well, I always have it open so I can add things quickly and easily, but I put it right on my to-do list to repeat every quarter so that I know that it needs to be done. It’s just kind of like that reminder in case you just need to go in and double check everything. 

Megan Porta: Yeah. This is one of those things that we all kind of know we should be doing, but it’s like we put it off because we just want to believe that nothing’s going to happen. It’s one of those things. So make a case for that, for people listening, just why we should do it and give us a timeframe. Because I like to hear, Megan, you should have this done in 30 days or something like that. Then I will actually put it on my calendar and do it. So I just want to hear, I want you to encourage me and the rest of my listeners to actually set this in motion.

Corinne Schmitt: So it’s funny that you say that, to have it in 30 days, because that is my recommendation. I like a full month because you catch everything, right? You catch when you do your stats, you catch when a paycheck hits in the middle of the month. In a month will generally catch anything, other than some weird seasonal stuff if you give yourself 30 days. It’s easy, again, if you just have it open somewhere, whatever form you’re keeping it in. If you have it open somewhere, so you just know to go drop that in, anytime that you’re working. It only takes a couple seconds each time that you go to add a new login or a new asset. As you’re working in, I’m trying to think of a good asset. If you’re doing photography, you go photograph and be like, oh my gosh, my camera’s worth $2,000. It should probably add that to the list of things that they need to know. Or an essential task. I don’t know how often people do this. I’m triaging all the time because my to-do list grows and grows and grows. Then I couldn’t get it all done and I got to go and triage. So when you triage and you boil it down to okay, to keep my blog running, I’ve got to focus just on content creation and promotion, add that to the list. Those are essential tasks to your business. So to me, a month, it’s very easy. It’s just a couple of seconds here and there. It adds up over time. It’s much easier to do that way. But the biggest reason, because I’m a big believer in Murphy’s law, is if you do it, you won’t need it. We all know that’s true. 

Megan Porta: Yes, love that. 

Christina Hitchcock: Best insurance policy. 

Corinne Schmitt: Do it. You won’t need it. You’ve just saved yourself from catastrophe problems. I know that’s not how the universe works, but it tends to fall out that way for me. 

Megan Porta: Right. No, I like that. 

Christina Hitchcock: So I would recommend that this week, when you’re listening to this episode, sometime this week, I want you to sit down and I want you to work out the framework of the information you want to collect and start putting it together. Pull in the basic business details and just like the high level stuff. Then leave that document or that app or whatever you’re using to track it, just leave it open, like Corrine said over the course of the month and begin filling in all the pieces as you go. Because then it’s not so overwhelming. It’s more like in bite sized pieces and you don’t feel like you have to do it all and then you’re gonna give up. 

Corinne Schmitt: If you’re still feeling overwhelmed, Christina and I took the plan that we built for ourselves and in Airtable and then we just stripped out all our personal details. So if you have no idea what information to put together and how to organize it, we’ve got that. We priced it. Like we want everyone to do it so it’s priced like a no brainer price in my opinion. So anyways it’s called Silo, the Smart Influencer Legacy Organizer. So maybe no one would open up Silo. I don’t know if that shouts. 

Christina Hitchcock: I think I am going to change it to Knitting 101. 

Corinne: So Silo, if someone wants that you can get that and then it obviously won’t have all your information there, but it does have everything else we talked about, including instructions for the person that is going to take over for you, or that’s going to be making the decisions. We have tips on what to include, the letter to ask them to take it over. Then we’ve got different views in it, another great thing about Airtable. So that the person that takes it over, doesn’t have to look at everything all at once. It’s basically the start here, here are the essential things, contact these people and do these things first. It’s already set up. Because that can be a lot to think through. We already did it. So if you want to start with that and get a jumpstart, then you just really have to fill in the data and it’s much easier.

Megan Porta: Awesome. So that was the product we were talking about before recording. Okay. So we will include that product in your show notes. So that’s awesome. I think having that would prompt me to just get started because why not? If it’s already there, I just need to fill in my details. But starting where you guys did, I can see that being a big hangup for myself, like, wow. But yeah, I appreciate that you did the legwork and that we would just need to go in and fill in the details. So that is amazing. Is there anything we forgot, you guys, that we should mention before we start saying goodbye? 

Corinne Schmitt: I don’t think so. 

Christina Hitchcock: I think we covered it all. I think it’s just really important once you have this information gathered, that you sit down and have that conversation with the person who’s taking it over and let them know where to find it and how to access it. So whether it’s paper or digital, whatever, just have that conversation. Not only so they’re not blindsided, but so that they know where to go and how to get it and what to do with it once they have. 

Megan Porta: This is great and it, yeah, my wheels are turning and I will definitely be using your Airtable template to get started myself. So thank you so much. It was so lovely to connect with you two. I usually don’t do video, but I loved seeing your faces today. This was really fun. It’s fun to be able to, I like audio, but I also like seeing the smiles and the expressions and you can kind of tell when someone’s going to talk and all of that.

Corinne Schmitt: Yes, that’s something Christina and I talk over each other a lot. So when you see someone open their mouth and take a breath like, oh I’ll hold mine. 

Megan Porta: Yup. Yup. That was helpful. All right. Well, I usually end by asking my guests if they have either a favorite quote or words of inspiration to share. Do either of you have anything along those lines?

Corinne Schmitt: So I actually have a quote from Christina. It’s something that she said once, and it really sums up to me why it’s so important and about contingency planning. She had said, “contingency planning is about ensuring that everything you’re investing in your business continues to pay dividends well into the future.” That to me is a perfect summation of why we do it. 

Megan Porta: Nice job Christina. 

Christina Hitchcock: I said that? 

Corinne Schmitt: I’ve got it right here in my notes. 

Megan Porta: That’s awesome. Isn’t that funny? When you say something and then someone else repeats it and you’re like, did I really say that? 

Christina Hitchcock: Those words came out of my mouth? In that order?

Corinne Schmitt: They did.

Megan Porta: That’s amazing. What a great way to sum up this entire chat. I absolutely love that. So if anyone wants to go peek at the show notes and grab that template we referred to, you can go to eatblogtalk.com/smartinfluencer. Tell everyone where they can find you online, on social media, on your podcast and anywhere else.

Christina Hitchcock: So you can find us online at thesmartinfluencer.com. You can access our podcasts and all of our social networks from there. Our podcast is called The Smart Influencer podcast. Pretty on brand there. Then all the social networks are The Smart Influencer. 

Megan Porta: Awesome. Thank you guys so much for joining me today. It was such a pleasure and thank you for listening today, food bloggers. I will see you in the next episode. 

Christina Hitchcock: Thank you. 

Outro: We’re glad you could join us on this episode of Eat Blog Talk. For more resources based on today’s discussion, as well as show notes and an opportunity to be on a future episode of the show, be sure to head to eatblogtalk.com. If you feel that hunger for information, we’ll be here to feed you on Eat Blog Talk.